This article is part of our morning briefing. Click here to get it delivered to your inbox each weekday. What I learned leading an antisemitism training for workers in a labor dispute with their Hasidic bosses. The Cabricanecos are a group of Guatemalan construction workers campaigning to gain stronger rights and protections — and better pay — from their Hasidic bosses in Brooklyn. In a new essay, Rabbi Margo Hughes-Robinson, an organizer for T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, chronicles the lessons she learned about her own Jewishness while leading them in a training to help them understand and avoid antisemitic tropes.
“Build relationships”: Hughes-Robinson is used to hearing other white Jews complain that Jewish issues are ignored in progressive spaces. But, she writes, those complaints don’t actually aid efforts to connect to and ally with “communities where we are not the majority or predominant voice.” Understanding why those communities might not be sensitive to Jewish issues is key: Many of the Cabricanecos had never interacted with Jews before beginning to work within Brooklyn’s Jewish communities. “The same haircut”: The workers had honest questions about unfamiliar aspects of Jewish practice — including one about the sidelocks worn by Hasidic boys and men. It’s important to remember, Hughes-Robinson writes, that asked in good faith, such questions can lead to understanding and respect. “Not just a Jewish problem”: For Hughes-Robinson, who has been joining the Cabricanecos on the picket lines for the last year, the issues of respect for other humans brought up by their organizing are connected to the work of eradicating bigotry. “If we could solve the issue of antisemitism on our own, we would have,” she writes. “We need accomplices, and they need us.” |
A newly arrived Darfuri refugee woman at Arkoum 1 Refugee Camp. (Monim Haroon) |
The genocide in Darfur didn’t go away, but the Jewish community’s attention did. Fifteen years ago, Jewish groups engaged in a concerted effort to draw attention to a genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. But today, as the region’s inhabitants again face horrific violence after a 2019 coup, American Jews are silent, senior contributing editor Rob Eshman writes in a new essay. “We have become positively obsessed with us: antisemitism on the left, the right, on campus and online,” Rob writes. “We have leaned hard into the first part of Hillel’s dictum — ‘If I am not for myself who will be for me?’ — and sloughed off the second — ‘If I am only for myself, who am I?’” Read his essay ➤
Meet the Jewish author behind one of America’s most-banned books. Novels by David Levithan, who writes young adult fiction for LGBTQIA+ teens, have turned up three times on the American Library Association’s annual list of most-censored books. Amid a book-banning surge in conservative-leaning states like Florida, his work is under renewed attack. “Politicians have jumped into the fray, trying to use the erasure of our books as tools as a proxy to erase our identities and histories,” he told our culture writer Irene Katz Connelly. “What felt before like small fires popping up now feels like an existential forest fire trying to destroy intellectual freedom and its role in democracy.” Read the story ➤ |
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
Kanye West, now known as Ye, onstage at the 2022 BET Awards. (Paras Griffin/Getty Images for BET) |
? Today in oh, great: Kanye West will be featured on a new song called “Israel.” The track by rapper Albe Black, which Black previewed on Instagram this week, includes a verse from West in which he raps about meeting the devil. (Times of Israel) ? Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt criticized Elon Musk for “engaging online with users who are espousing antisemitism and hate” — but stayed diplomatic and complimented Musk’s business acumen in his first remarks since Musk ramped up attacks on the ADL this week. (Musk has accused the ADL of trying to decimate X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter — which he owns — by encouraging an ad boycott against it, and threatened a lawsuit.) (JTA) ? A man wearing a swastika and waving a Nazi flag shot and killed a coworker in Australia. The shooter killed himself once cornered by police. (New York Post) ?Today in gee, thanks: An Ohio school board member apologized for delivering a Nazi salute and saying “Sieg heil” during a public meeting. Anne Zakkour initially “said she was making a ‘sarcastic gesture’ of ‘submission to a board member trying to act like a dictator’” and that she did not wish to alarm Jews. (JTA) ✈️ The United States has extradited a neo-Nazi to face hate crime charges in Amsterdam related to an incident at the Anne Frank House. Robert Wilson, 41, allegedly projected an antisemitic message on the exterior of the landmark in February. (Times of San Diego) ?️ The National Council for Jewish Women dinged President Joe Biden after the announcement of a new ambassador to Israel. The head of the prominent advocacy group said the Biden administration made too weak an effort to consider a woman for the role, which went to Jack Lew. (Forward) ⛪ Newly discovered documents appear to list more than 3,000 Jews sheltered from the Holocaust by Catholic institutions — despite the Vatican’s official silence during the Shoah. (JTA)
What else we’re reading ➤ This former Bachelorette came out — now, she might convert to Judaism … “Meet the viral TikToker highlighting what it’s like to be Black and Jewish” … Inside the lives of Jews in East Germany after World War II. |
A portrait of Queen Elizabeth II is displayed in St. Davids Cathedral in Wales on the first anniversary of her death. (Toby Melville – Pool/Getty Images) |
On this day in history (2022): Queen Elizabeth II died at 96. “Her affection for the Jewish people ran deep, and her respect for our values was palpable,” Ephraim Mirvis, chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, said after Elizabeth’s passing. But Elizabeth’s relationship with British Jews wasn’t necessarily warm; she never visited Israel, and, Benjamin Ivry wrote in the Forward on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee — marking 70 years of her reign — “maintained strictly professional, although unfailingly courteous, contacts with Jews over the years.” |
In 2021, the British Jewish actress Miriam Margolyes went on Late Night with Seth Meyers to recall the time that Queen Elizabeth told her to “be quiet” at a reception at Buckingham Palace. (Don’t worry — in Margolyes’ own assessment, Elizabeth was justified.) — Thanks to Benyamin Cohen and Beth Harpaz for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com. |
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